Design of an anthropomorphic dexterous hand for a 2-years-old humanoid: ongoing work

Abstract

This paper presents the latest results in developing an anthropomorphic dextrous hand for a 2-years-old humanoid. As this robot is aimed to be a physical platform for cognition, the number of degrees of freedom of the upper part of the body has been maximized. The robotic hand has 20 DoFs and 9 motors to accomplish optimal grasping and manipulation. Based on the manipulation tasks required in the project and on the human hand functional anatomy, a mixed implementation of cable directed driven and underactuated joints has been designed, developed, tested and debugged. The abduction/adduction of the fingers and the hollowing of the palm have been implemented and coupled together, driven by a single actuator. The latest prototype has been developed; it includes the hand mechanism, the actuators and a proprioceptive sensory system for the joint positioning and the grasping force control. Index Terms – Cognitive, Manipulation, Hand, Humanoid, Under-actuation.